


Faint

by inaflorian



Series: These small parts [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 21:09:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11170125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inaflorian/pseuds/inaflorian
Summary: Erwin understands why Levi gets angry at him sometimes.





	Faint

Some mornings Levi comes in his office, sits on the sofa or on a stool by the bookshelves, brings with him a pot of tea and a whetstone for his knife and works it over the edge for hundreds of strokes until he’s satisfied. Today he leaves as quietly as he came, closing the door with barely a creak when he returns, his steps mere echoes of others’. When Erwin looks up in thought, Levi’s there and his head rises, his eyes focus for a little while before he looks back down to his cup of tea.

He gets up after noon, brings Erwin a steaming bowl of stew and freshly baked bread, sits there a few more minutes before leaving him alone to forget to eat until the food has grown cold and near stale. The next time he comes around he brings a waft of soap and his posture is more relaxed, his eyes mere slits as he takes the dishes away only to replace them with another tray before circling around the table.

The close proximity alerts Erwin then, makes him rub at his eyes tiredly as he realises he has squinted from the reducing light. His posture is steely, his neck is aching from hunching over the text, the maps, whatever he has been working on and he turns to look at Levi whose hand sneaks past his own as he closes the book he’s been peering at, making notes of, and sighs tiredly.

“You should have a break,” he says much more gently than Erwin knows he means to.

Erwin looks around the room, realises it’s later in the day than he thought, realises he needs to get on his feet to remind his body of its natural flow and he concedes, nodding once and avoiding Levi’s eyes that haunt at his. When he gets back, after washing up and freshening his shave with a few quick swipes of the blade he suspects Levi’s whetstone has passed against, he takes a seat on the sofa where the tray is now waiting and bites into the bread, already flaky and a little dried. He grimaces at the taste of hot peppers in the food, allowing the prickling and burning to bite into his cheeks and lips as he swallows the last bits with the bread.

“They’re trying a new rotation in the kitchens,” Levi says from his desk where he likes to stay until Erwin has eaten. “The chef said the heat helps with indigestion.”

Erwin drinks the water in the wooden cup gratefully and feels its cooling effect immediately. He hasn’t realised how much the heat of the food has affected him until he passes a hand over his face.

“It’s certainly different,” Erwin says carefully as he moves to get on his feet. The muscles on his thighs pull painfully and his lower back twinges sympathetically.

Levi is quick to collect the tray. “When I come back you had better not be sitting down.”

Erwin nods absently, feels Levi’s pause before the sigh that follows and the slight creak of the door as it pulls shut. He runs his hand through his hair, feeling a start of a headache as he moves over to his desk, looking at the pieces of the puzzle he’s working on. His eyes move on the drawings, the numbers and intercepted letters and he is relieved to not see anything for a second as it all blurs in his vision. He is vaguely aware of the almost-soft embrace of the floor as his face connects with it and he blacks out.

“Erwin?”

He can feel a hand going over his body, over his chest, his face, forehead, pausing once more over his chest before he’s being hauled upwards and onto something soft and comfortable. His eyes sting with exhaustion as he tries to open them, his whole body feels rigid with tension, it reminds him of a corpse’s body, stiff and tightening.

“Don’t move,” he hears the voice say again. It’s commanding, like his father used to sound like when he tried to climb a tree too high, when he had sneaked to stand on top of the wall with Nile, to see the land beyond, to see the titans.

“I’ll be right back.”

He feels the hand leaving his chest, the steps turning fast and loud and he can hear a panic in that commanding voice. Like his mother’s when he told her he was going to join the Survey Corps.

Erwin waits. He feels his heart hammering in his chest, the dryness of his mouth, the twitching feeling in his gut and he just waits, knowing this is why Levi is with him in his office every day. He opens his eyes against the burning, sees his office ceiling, the wooden beams that threaten to spin in his vision when he moves his eyes.

“Commander,” the doctor speaks when he enters the room seconds later and Erwin feels sick with the motion it brings into his field of vision. He closes his eyes tightly, relaxing only when a hand brushes against his arm. “Where is the pain?”

Erwin wants to laugh at the absurdity. “My head is spinning.”

“He was on the ground,” Erwin hears Levi say quietly from above him.

“Fainted.”

He can feel the doctor’s hands on him, on his neck, throat and chest and shoulders, pressing and prodding. He moves quickly and efficiently before he sighs.

“I should like to have a word with you,” the doctor says faintly and Erwin is almost completely sure it’s not him the doctor is talking to.

Soon enough he feels a slight squeeze on his arm before he hears the men leave the room. He wishes there was a cold cloth he could press over his eyes to stop the spinning. It isn’t unfamiliar to him to faint, he had stood on the wall for hours back when he was only a cadet and he remembers it clearly even this day when he woke up to Nile screaming and shaking him after having collapsed, and this doesn’t feel like that. He feels he can barely move his head from the aching.

The door goes again and Erwin sighs, his head pulsing in the rhythm of the spinning. “Levi?”

“I’m here,” the man says, walking to him. “You need to sleep.”

“Alright.“

“You’ve exhausted yourself.”

“I see,” he says, realising there is no arguing with Levi when he can barely even open his eyes.

“Bedroom then.”

Erwin opens his eyes, fighting to control his vision of Levi. “Would you help me up?”

Levi nods, pulling him up slowly. “There’s no one in the corridor. I’ve cleared it.”

“Thank you,” he whispers when they take their first step and Levi loops his arm around his neck.

It seems like hours before they reach his bedroom and Levi drops his arm. The room is cool, like it always is before night, the sheets are fresh and there’s a scent of pine in the air. The window has been propped open. He can almost feel the breeze even if he doesn’t dare turn to look.

Sleep comes easy and when he wakes up, feeling heavy and limp and rested, he blinks his eyes open in the sunlight that comes in through the window. The spinning has stopped. There’s a washbowl next to him filled with water and a damp cloth on the nightstand beside it. He doesn’t remember any of it.

“Levi?” he dares to ask but there’s no response. He looks down on his body and hopes to see something fresh but noticing the uniform he sits up at the edge of his bed and sighs.

He washes himself with a few bucketfuls of cool water, running his hands over his tense shoulders harder than usually before he wraps himself in a towel and cleans himself in front of the mirror, parting his hair, giving himself a careful shave and rubbing a touch of oil on the drying sunburns on his cheeks before brushing his teeth and drinking a glass of water.

Erwin finds Levi outside where the Corps horses are being doused with cool water from the well after what seems to have been a rigorous exercise. The Captain is giving his horse a bath, soaking her mane with cool water, giving her a soft murmur every once in a while. He doesn’t notice Erwin watching until he’s all out of water.

“You seem rested,” the man says tightly, his lips pressed thin as he moves over to the well, pumping the water out to rinse his hands. A soldier comes up to ask Levi if he can dry his horse. Levi dismisses him with an impatient yes.

They walk side by side back towards the main barracks building, to an empty arched hallway along one of the outer walls. Levi’s steps are fast to Erwin’s unhurried and he turns to look at him in irritation.

“What? Are you going to pass out again?” the man asks, clearly dismayed and Erwin feels a flush of shame on his cheeks.

“I am sorry you had to see that,” he tells Levi who scoffs in return.

“Of course you are.”

Erwin looks at the man, his uniform dusty from the exercise, his hair damp with sweat and his face gritty from the ODM training. There’s a frown, a closed up, hurt edge to the way he looks at Erwin and he wants to ignore it, to push it aside and forget how much there is there.

“I don’t want you to think I am ungrateful for all you have done for me,” he tries, hoping to express how much he means the words even if their relationship doesn’t seem to always allow it.

Levi doesn’t seem happy with that either, his displeasure apparent in the way he fidgets on his feet.

“Thank you, Levi,” Erwin says, trying again to reach the man, pausing to steel himself before looking up at him. Levi faces him with the anger that grows with every single failure of Erwin’s.

He tries to keep the distance between them, he tries to keep the man from his bedroom, he tries to keep his mind from wandering but when Levi steps closer, takes another step and reaches for his face, pulls his chin up and looks him in the eye with that frown, there’s nothing he can fight with and there is nothing he can protect himself with.

“I’m sorry,” Levi tells him softly, looking up at him, his eyes flickering with worry when Erwin feels the familiar hand coming up to rest between them over his chest. “You scared me. That’s all.”

He looks down at the man, at his face gritty with sand that seems to have baked into a layer in the sun and he lifts his fingers to brush it off, passing his thumb over Levi’s lips, sighing when he knows he has to pull back and letting go of that necessity when Levi reaches for his neck and pulls him down into a quick kiss that sparks more than it should have the power to before letting go of him and stepping back, looking away at last and granting Erwin some dignity.

“I’ll bring tea after I’m done washing up,” the man says, dismissing himself.

They have tea in his office, hear the reports from the Officers and even have a long dinner with Hange who indulges them with a new idea for a study that makes Levi shudder. That night when Levi gets up to close the books on Erwin’s desk, he doesn’t mind it. He lets the man lead him to his bedroom and he allows himself this freedom he has closed his heart to too many times.


End file.
